Orediggers #1 in first NAIA Football Performance Index

The NAIA has released their first NAIA Performance Index of the 2025 football season and sitting at the top of the pile?  YOUR Montana Tech Orediggers. It's fantastic news, sure but you're probably asking yourself, "what in the heck is a performance index?"  I'll give you a quick explanation.  The NAIA Performance Index is a new metric which will be used to select at-large qualifiers for the NAIA Football Championship Series.  It's going to be very important for good NAIA teams that do not win their division and could prove to be very important possibly to Montana Tech but certainly for the rest of the very competitive Frontier Conference.

Right now, the NAIA has 13 automatic qualifiers and seven at-large qualifiers. The automatic qualifiers gain their entrance to the NAIA postseason by winning their regular season conference titles. The remaining seven qualifiers are selected by the NAIA Football National Selection Committee and a series of criteria that has been determined by the NAIA. New for this year is the NAIA Football Performance Index. It takes the place of the NAIA Football Top 25 Coaches Poll in the criteria.

The NAIA Football Performance Index may give a more accurate picture of NAIA football than the coaches poll as it awards points to teams based on their wins and losses, where they occurred and the win percentage of their opponent. For example, a team is awarded 39 points for beating a team with a .900 win percentage on the road and only 24 points for beating a team that has below a .099 win percentage.  There are many other factors that go into consideration as well. Here is the complete criteria used for the Football Performance Index.

Here are the latest results of the performance index as of last week.